Reversion
posted January 20, 2008 3:00 AM
Lo-fi science fiction made with limited resources does not want for ambition or ideas
Reversion (full disclosure: I am friendly with the filmmaker and once executive-produced a documentary film she made) is Mia Trachinger’s thought-provoking lo-fi science fiction movie/rumination on mortality, memory and destiny, and it does what any low-budget independent film ought to do, which is to assure the viewer that its maker is capable of great things.
At the risk of playing the word-association games critics frequently resort to for movies they’re not sure they fully understand, Reversion is like an Alex Cox movie made by Jim Jarmusch; like Repo Man, it’s a genre fantasy in an only slightly alternate universe utilizing nary a lick of phantasmagoric art direction, and like Jarmusch, Trachinger has a good eye and a way with broken, elliptical and circular dialogue that exerts a slow but cumulative fascination for the sympathetic viewer.
The plot concerns a mutant subculture in Silver Lake, Calif., that doesn’t possess what Reverison calls the “time gene” or somesuch; like Kurt Vonnegut’s interstellar Tralfamadorians, they live in the past, present and future all at the same time. For Eva (Leslie Silva, simultaneously channeling Pam Grier and Joie Lee), this is a particular source of torment, because she knows she’s fated to shoot her lover Marcus (Jason Olive) but she doesn’t know exactly why. Eva tries to elude her fate, in the process addressing a truckload of existential concerns in ways both humorous and profound.
Given such high thematic ambitions and very limited means, the seams show, of course, as they almost always do. The acting is variable, and Olive in particular has a regrettable kind of L.A. look about him that can only be gotten by spending uncounted hours working out while waiting for agents and producers to make phone calls that almost never come. Trachinger and her technical team also rely a little heavily on the Final Cut Pro and After Effects gimmickry that has broken out in the indie experimental scene like an unchecked case of measles.
But Trachinger clearly has the wit and the talent to do thought-provoking and challenging work. All she needs is a producer with similar aspirations, and she’ll be well on her way toward fully achieving the promise on display here.
Distributor: No distribution set
Cast: Leslie Silva, Jason Olive and Tom Maden
Director/Screenwriter: Mia Trachinger
Producer: Rebecca Sonnenshine
Genre: Experimental sci-fi
Rating: Not yet rated
Running time: 90 min.
Release date: TBD
Reviewed: Sundance Film Festival 2008
3 Comments
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blackman said:
Um, okay. But why are the characters black? Can you say exploitative in the lamest, most self-indulgent way possible?
January 28, 2008 4:27 PM
Chris said:
Are you serious? Wow, you MUST be friendly with the filmmaker to give her - or at least this movie - that much credit. "Reversion" is completely incompetent - artistically incompetent and intellectually competent.
Didn't you love how every moment in the characters' lives is supposedly "one big mish-mash" (as one character says), and yet the film is 1) almost completely linear; and 2) takes place over the course of 2 days, out of the thousands of days that are supposedly such a jumble?
Or how the characters use terms like "tomorrow," "later," "in a little while," "yesterday," etc. (yes, with the intended meaning, the same way you or I would use them) - yet, once again, they're NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE ANY CONCEPT OF LINEAR TIME.
How brainless must a filmmaker be to not even understand his or her OWN ideas, or know how to intelligently utilize them? Should I even start on how completely obvious the elements of the story were? Should I bother pointing out all the blatant, "how could any reasonably intelligent human being actually not notice this?" plotline/character/thematic holes? Or the completely dumbfounding, inexplicable socio-political metaphor thrown in at the end?
My God. You've got to be kidding me with this review. How in the blue hell does this film "assure [us] that its maker is capable of great things"?
February 28, 2008 4:51 AM
Danny said:
Wow. I saw this train wreck at Sundance, and from a crop of underwhelming films that I've seen in the past five years of attendance, Reversion just might take the cake as the worst.
It's hard to add on to what Chris has already mentioned in the previous post, and Mia Trachinger has already stolen over an hour of my life.
The review noticeably doesn't mention what it is that is thought provoking, etc. in the film because there simply isn't much there at all.
What does Mia Trachinger's film career promise? An opportunity for sycophants like this reviewer to gather together and promote trash as art, all for the sake of attempting to sound smarter than all their intellectual bullshit is worth.
Reversion is the emperor's new clothes of shitty, terrible, epitome-of-pretentious-bullshit-bad-art films.
Mia Trachinger, I'm waiting for my hour and a half back.
March 11, 2008 1:56 PM